Brood Mares
by Verbophobic
Summary: Cybertron is ruled by Primal Seekers. The war is over and those warriors returning find their capture and eventual sparking on the planet now.


It was called The Great War. It wasn't the first large scale war fought by Cybertronians, but it was their first _civil_ war. All ground bound mecha had fought in the war to try and create equality amongst themselves. These were the original beliefs, and throughout the war they all tried to stick by them, hold to their values, but over time the end goals were skewed to a point that many soldiers had long forgotten why they were still fighting.

The Autobots wanted all sentient beings - though obviously at the time that did not include pets or the monsters of their planet such as cyberhounds, seekers, or sparkeaters - to be equal and have all the same rights. Their leader, Orion Pax, had known it would take time and effort, yet he was more than prepared for the process and he knew that his closest friends and allies would stand by his side to the very end. All but a single one actually did.

The Decepticons were formed long before the Autobots, but the two groups had merged for a time when Orion Pax and Megatronus were friends. For a time, Orion and Megatronus had worked together to fight against the inequality in their society, and they had been doing well. Too well. Not long after the Matrix had chosen Orion and turned him into the bot now known as Optimus Prime however, Megatronus declared war. He shed a part of his designation to show he too was now a different mech, and he claimed that Optimus had become as corrupt as the Senate From that point on, the two factions fought battles against each other, rather than the corrupt government they had once stood against together.

These battles ranged millennia and eventually the damage got to the point that the planet of Cybertron itself was on the brink of destruction. As the Autobots fled, hoping the Decepticons would follow (which they did) a large fraction of troops on both sides stayed behind to try and keep what pieces of Cybertron they still had. Throughout all of this, neither faction of the war had thought about the Seekers who had all hidden away in their forests, murdering any that dared to try and take their lands.

Over the vorns there were brief moments of peace, of quiet, for the Autobots. An unspoken law was in place, though it was less of a law and more simple common sense: No sparklings. No one was to get sparked and there would be no sparklings forced to live and grow up in this war. Unfortunately when inhibitors failed and bondmates merged, sparklings were created anyway. Two different sets of mechs had sparklings before the Autobot's medic could put a more permanent solution onto all the Autobots and keep them from creating until it was safe.

Growing up in the war was not easy on the sparklings. The extraordinary offspring were very unique, being taught from emergence to the end of the war a specific skill set and they excelled more prominently than what the best of the best could do. The twins from one carrier were better fighters, better brute force front liners, than their sire was at tactics, than their carrier was at espionage. The other sparkling - from a different set of mates - had sharp shooting skills that far surpassed his carriers 'good luck' when it came to gambling and his ability to use his own gift at tactics to get out of particularly sticky situations.

Growing up with little else for education aside from how to fight, how to kill, how to survive, made them masters at their craft, everyone knew there were things just _wrong_ with the sparklings because of this upbringing. Sideswipe's penchant for pranking came from an incessant boredom that he could never get rid of save for during battles where he could go all out. Sunstreaker was snippy, volatile. Touch him or speak to him wrong and there was a chance he'd snap and attack. Poor little Bluestreak was only ever silent when practicing or on the field. There was something in him that was missing, whatever it was that made a mech be quiet, Bluestreak did not have that. He could - and would - go on for an entire orn if allowed to.

As the war hit the planet Earth and the purpose of battle shifted from destroying the Decepticons at all costs to protecting the humans, the mecha changed too. Most of them that is. A few didn't, and those few would struggle to acclimate back to a civilized setting when the fighting was finally over. When a few terran months went by with no fighting at all, due to heavy casualties on the Decepticon side, many of the Autobots began to finally realize that while the entire army that had joined together had a chance of becoming civilized again, the three sparklings would never be able to settle properly.

What neither side knew, was that a civilized life on Cybertron had long since become impossible. Their home planet may have been hospitable once again, but that said nothing about the dangers that had always existed, or what had happened to the left behind members of their race as a whole. The beasts didn't simply run amok, they ruled now.

Seekers, previously seen as nothing more than bestial mech like look alikes, saw a chance after the armies left behind settled and stopped fighting to instead work together to attempt to rebuild. They attacked, they were planning to get rid of the grounders for good but something had happened.

A seeker had a sparkling. It was crippled. Unable to properly vent, wings bent out of shape and it's servo's and pedes were deformed stumps. It died quickly and it seemed that after that all sparklings of seeker kin were birthed that way, perhaps not with the same disabilities but all damaged enough they offlined. The seekers pulled back from their new war to try and find a way to fix this. But it was too late and their coding was all too closely written. Too much breeding closely through codes had narrowed the codes down to a point where they could not create with each other properly.

None left on cybertron are sure how it happened, but the seekers found out that they could reproduce with ground bound mecha. Their sparklings turned out to be seekerlingsall of the time at first. So the killing of grounders stopped if only to have mechs that could be breed with. Those grounder that were mated to each other could not produce and it was learned that if one died both died. But by the time that that was found out, there was a full out ban on hunting or killing grounders uselessly.

Bonded mecha were spared the fate of being breed or killed, instead the seekers made use of them. Given tasks that they could without the air it wasn't long before the seekers cared for the grounders. Brood mares were treasured by the seeker trine that held onto them and in turn the grounders began to become fond of the seekers.

When the first grounder sparkling was produced the seeker trine didn't know what to do. Seeing the horrified and broken look that their brood mare showed they made a choice, they kept it. Not only that but they let the mare be a part of it's growth and life. The seeker turned out into one of the strongest and smartest, it excelled in just about everything.

Thundercracker, they called him. He broke through every barrier that was put in front of him and quickly ascended into being a young but mature winglord. He changed _everything_. Starting with brood mares were considered free mecha. Free to move about as they willed. Still the broods belonged to the trine that picked them- free or not- and any newly chosen broods had no choice in the matter if they wanted to play that part or not, the population still needed drastic help to regrow.

The freedom only let them socialize with each other and have their friends close by.

Communications were cut off between these enslaved grounders and those that still fought a war. So when the factions, no longer enemies, returned to cybertron, they were like fresh energon to a pack of starved cyber hounds. Quite a few were quickly grabbed and taken away before anyone knew any better. No matter what they did they were picked off one by one.

A grounder scientist tested everyone that was grabbed and those that could be bred were tossed into cages to be looked over and those that could not- those bonded or had weak sparks that would not carry were sectioned off to be taught how to acclimate to their new life. From there, everything was up to the captured grounders and their forced mates.


End file.
